On Thursday morning, during the Senate Intelligence Committee’s confirmation hearing for Representative Mike Pompeo, of Kansas, Donald Trump’s nominee to be the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, he took a question from Senator Dianne Feinstein, of California. “If you were ordered by the President to re-start the C.I.A.’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques that fall outside of the Army Field Manual, would you comply?” Feinstein asked. In other words, if Pompeo were asked to break what is the clear law of the land, under a 2015 act of Congress, by directing his agents to torture detainees, would he do it?

“Senator, absolutely not,” Pompeo replied. "Moreover, I can’t imagine that I would be asked that by the President-elect.” The first part of his answer is, in a low-bar kind of way, reassuring, although it would be quite something to hear a nominee vow to break the law. The second part, though, if Pompeo really means it, represents another kind of shortcoming in an intelligence official: a failure of imagination. After all, during the campaign, Trump said that he wanted to bring back waterboarding “and a hell of a lot worse.” The President-elect (who is said to have been drawn to Pompeo because of his virulence on the subject of Benghazi) has not abandoned that position; even as he expressed wonder at General James Mattis’s antipathy toward torture, he said that it hadn’t changed his mind. One would like to think that Pompeo is ready for Trump to surprise him.

And the doubts raised by Pompeo’s response don’t even encompass his potential response to any changes to the law that a Republican-controlled Congress might pass, and that President Trump might eagerly sign. Pompeo, in his public testimony, did not put to rest questions about positions on torture that he himself has professed in the past, or about what he might encourage Trump to do, if Trump should turn to him in private. Pompeo, in past statements, has defended the use of waterboarding under the Bush Administration, with the bankrupt argument that, although torture was illegal, waterboarding was not torture, and nor were other “techniques” that lawyers in the Administration signed off on. Before Feinstein, who was instrumental in the Senate’s inquiry into C.I.A. torture and interrogation practices, asked her question, she had mentioned the customary private meeting that she and Pompeo had had before the hearing, and said, “I do appreciate your apology. I take it with the sincerity with which you gave it.” She offered no explanation, at least in the public session, but she may have been referring to comments that Pompeo made after a redacted executive summary of the Senate torture report, which included findings that shook people across the political spectrum, was released, in December, 2014. In a statement, Pompeo said, “Senator Feinstein today has put American lives at risk.” He added that the intelligence operatives whose acts were scrutinized were "heroes, not pawns in some liberal game being played by the A.C.L.U. and Senator Feinstein."

On Thursday, though, he smiled, told Feinstein that he was glad to see her back—she had been gone for a day from this week’s non-stop round of hearings, to be fitted with a pacemaker—and said, “I’ll always comply with the law.” He also told Senator John McCain, of Arizona, a leading opponent of the use of torture, that, if any changes to the law or to the Army Field Manual itself were contemplated, he would be sure to come back to Congress and talk about it. Taken in toto, the exchanges were a reminder that the confirmation process is only the beginning of vigilance when it comes to preventing a return to torture.

The same concern arose when Senator Ron Wyden, of Oregon, questioned Pompeo about an op-ed that he had written for the Wall Street Journal in January, 2016, calling for a return to the collection of phone metadata and other information about Americans, including about their “lifestyle.” When Wyden asked if Pompeo saw any “boundaries” there, Pompeo cited existing law, including amendments to the Freedom Act which were passed in response to the outrage at the mass collection of data about Americans’ phone calls, which came to light thanks to Edward Snowden. But, Wyden said, “after the law passed, you said, ‘Let’s get back in the business.’ ” In a follow-up, Senator Roy Blunt, of Missouri, gave Pompeo a chance to say that much of the data that he’d suggested collecting was information that members of the public “had chosen to no longer keep private.” In that view, would, say, attendance at a place of worship be “private”? Formulations like that also gloss over the distinction between targeted assessments and bulk collection, and the ways that people’s engagement with technology—even their choice to use a messaging system, for example—makes it more complicated to say what they have “chosen” to make public.

Senator John Cornyn, of Texas, seemed to have his own reason for worrying about the talk of torture and surveillance—something that he imagined as a “Ferguson effect.” Would intelligence agencies no longer use the “full array of their authority because of fear of what might happen in terms of public opinion or political retribution”? Might they, concerned about how their behavior was viewed, not go to “the edge”? Cornyn wanted to know if Pompeo would “stand up” for the agency when it was told by someone—say, the White House’s Office of Legal Counsel, the same people who sanctioned torture under George W. Bush—that its actions were legal. “None of those authorities are going to be decided, in all likelihood, by the Supreme Court,” Cornyn said, meaning, presumably, that the decision about how to handle a suspect might take place either outside of public view or in response to on-the-ground, breaking events. He added that he finds it a pity when “politics intervene,” and Pompeo agreed that it was “a real risk.” But politics, and public opinion, is the realm in which Americans debate their values and determine what trade-offs between safety and freedom—and, in the case of torture, self-respect—they are willing to make.

Feinstein, as one of the most senior senators, spoke at the beginning of the hearing. Kamala Harris, the junior senator from California and a new member of the body, spoke toward the end. She asked Pompeo about climate change, which intelligence agencies have recognized as a security threat. But, judging from his expression, Pompeo, who has scoffed at the crisis in past statements, didn’t quite grasp her point. He said that he “would prefer not to get into the details of climate debate and science.” A little later, in a follow-up, Harris explained that she had asked about climate change in part because it would be good to know if Pompeo would put aside partisanship when agencies like NASA gave him information—about anything—that he didn’t like. Pompeo said that he would listen to those agencies. Soon after that, the committee moved into closed session, without cameras or public viewers, who also won’t be there when Pompeo, as C.I.A. director, walks into the Oval Office to talk to President Trump.

Amy Davidson Sorkin is a New Yorker staff writer. She is a regular Comment contributor for the magazine and writes a Web column, in which she covers war, sports, and everything in between.